'It's very hard for me to accept, but I get it,' singer tells Elle in May issue of public backlash.

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Rihanna didn't call her latest album Talk That Talk for nothing. The Good Girl Gone Bad regularly hits Twitter to hash it out over everything from her taste in ink to her take on fellow R&B divas. But the one subject she'd kept off her tongue was ex-boyfriend Chris Brown.

So the Bajan beauty's decision this year to very publicly reconcile with Brown, who served probation for assaulting her in 2009, by teaming up with him in February on a pair of remixes was widely met with shock and, in many circles, outrage. In the new issue of Elle, however, the blond cover girl tells the magazine she understands her decision is a hard pill for some to swallow.

"The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently. It's very hard for me to accept, but I get it," she says. "People end up wasting their time on the blogs or whatever, ranting away, and that's all right. Because tomorrow I'm still going to be the same person. I'm still going to do what I want to do."

Rather than view the violent end of her relationship with Brown as a brutal low to be endured as a victim, the superstar says the fallout from the headline-making assault gave her courage.

"It gave me guns," she says. "I was like, well, f---. [The public knows] more about me than I want them to know. It's embarrassing. But that was my opening. That was my liberation ... Now you know that, so you can say what you want about it. I don't have anything to hide."

In the wake of her provocative "Birthday Cake" remix with Brown, the 24-year-old was rumored to have reunited with the "Deuces" singer both in and out of the studio. But Rih says in the May issue (out April 17) that she's focused on changing her single status to "in a relationship," stressing over the pervasive man shortage and her busy schedule.

"I feel like it's hard for everybody! I don't think it has anything to do with being famous. There's just a major drought out there."